Hello! I have a question about the rank of a character of mine- I'm planning on making her the highest-ranking official, and therefore "In Charge", at a military barracks stationed in/by a city. I'm not sure what the ranking might be for a person stationed in that position, but I do know that I wanted her to be at least somewhat high up the ladder. FYI, this is all set in "the future" so it might not be like modern terms/ranks, but any help you can give me about rank and barracks would be great!
The easiest way to figure out what rank you want someone to be is to decide how many people you want them to be in charge of.Ā
I like using this small tree to show people how you can do the math
Image from olive-drab.com, a good resource if you just wanna start diving through pages of military stuff.
Also a quick note:Ā ābarracksā just refers to the living quarters we sleep in, which are usually on an army post! If Iām understanding correctly, your soldier is the commander of the installation itself, so youāll find more on google looking for either base or post commander.
Generally we consider an O-6, or a colonel, to be the standard post commander. As you can see on the chart above, colonels generally have command of a brigade, or 3000-5000 soldiers total.Ā
A smaller post we occupy (still in a city) is Suwon Air Base in South Korea. Itās not an army installation, it belongs to South Korea, and they have a chunk and we have a chunk and thatās how it is. Itās quite small and lacks most accommodations larger army posts are accustomed to. 6/52 (a battalion level unit) is the only U.S. unit there, and two of its five companies are housed on a separate installation. It doesnāt have family housing either. A few hundred people at best. Its āpost commanderā is an O-4, a lieutenant colonel, and heās only the post commander in as much as he controls his unit and doesnāt let them fuck up Koreaās base.Ā A larger post example is Fort Bliss, El Paso. El Paso is a surprisingly sprawling and bustling city with an entire other city plunked into it. Last population count was 33,000 (not all soldiers) with 1700 square miles of space. For land mass reference, thatās almost three Londons, or six New Yorks, or about twenty-four Washington, D.C.s. If Iām not mistaken itās home to eight distinct army units (as well as two German) some at the Division level and some at the Brigade level, culminating in its post commander being an O-8, or major general. Not all of the people who live on Fort Bliss are in the U.S. military, but theyāre still subject to the Post Commanderās rules and mandates as long as they live and work on the installation.So before I can help more youād probably want to decide what kind of post it is, how big, how populous, and where, because U.S. occupied posts are always going to be much more populated than OCONUS (orĀ āoutside the continental/contiguous U.S.ā) posts, and yes that includes Hawaii and Alaska.
Some last hints:-We can also useĀ āgarrisonā as synonymous with āpost,ā particularly a permanent one belonging to the U.S. It has three syllables though and thatās a lot.Ā -Posts namedĀ āFortā were traditionally established as defensive garrisons, and posts namedĀ āCampā were traditionally established to house the units. Over the years this has become a moot point and doesnāt matter lol but hey, maybe you can come up with cool history!-There are also two different types of post: the one Iāve spoken of here, (aka ābaseā but thatās usually a Naval/Air term even we drop it sometimes) and āmy/your/their post,ā meaning your designated duty whether that means guard duty or dish duty.Ā āAbandoning your postā does refer to leaving your place of duty, not leaving your installation. Going to the toilet could be abandoning your post.
I hope this gave you somewhere to get started!
-Spc. Kingsley














